/RavenCroft Manor
The brief was to break into a vault hidden beneath a noble estate. My challenge was building a space that felt like a believable lived-in manor while supporting open, multi-route stealth within VR's sightline and performance constraints
/Layout & Collaboration
I started by referencing real manor schematics to ground the layout in believability and give the narrative designer a realistic room list to build story beats around. The interior room list was shaped through ongoing conversations between myself, art, and narrative, balancing what the player needed to explore against what the team could realistically build and dress within budget.
What if the vault was hidden beneath a garden maze? I started experimenting with different locations for the vault, ways which would let me introduce verticality into the level while working within VR's sightline constraints.
After the first 2 paper iterations, blockout and 2D planning were running in parallel, each informing the other as spatial problems revealed themselves in 3D
What if the vault was hidden beneath a garden maze? I started experimenting with different locations for the vault, ways which would let me introduce verticality into the level while working within VR's sightline constraints.
/Blockout
Each blockout pass was about pushing the manor to feel like a real building while keeping performance viable. Sightlines were managed deliberately, and the footprint expanded as we found headroom to do so.
Working with art extended into performance throughout. VR's rendering constraints meant every large sightline had to be deliberately managed. We discussed occlusion approaches together, balancing performance against giving players enough visual information to read the space and formulate a plan.
The level was designed around the core Thief pillar of systemic, open-ended play; multiple ways in, each with a different feel. Curious players might discover the side garden and the secret entrance it reveals, or loop around to the back for a more classic break-in. Bolder players might want to tackle the front door, but getting there means first slipping past three guards and a roaming light to reach the generator on the left side and cut the power. Every route was a deliberate choice, not a shortcut.
The stealth feel was built into the space itself. Dynamic lights sweep areas that leave players genuinely exposed, while bushes sit just tall enough to offer cover but never guaranteed safety, just enough to breathe. Dark spots were placed with intent, giving patient players somewhere to stop, observe a guard's movement, and wait for the right moment. The tension between exposure and safety is what makes the traversal feel earned
With the layout signed off, we moved into art and lighting. Flow and encounters were locked, subsequent changes were limited to dressing and performance optimisation
/Final Shots
